Christopher McQuarrie, who’s currently filming the latest installment in theMission: Impossiblefranchise, is already setting up what might be his next directorial effort. And he’s assembled quite the supporting crew to tackle it. McQuarrie will develop to directThe Chameleon, an adaptation ofDavid Grann’s 2008 “New Yorker” feature of the same title that chronicled the story of a serial impersonator and accomplished con man.
Deadlinereports that Netflix has acquired the rights to the feature and has set McQuarrie to develop and direct from a script by Oscar-nominated writerTerence Winter(The Wolf of Wall Street) and co-writerCarl Capotorto(The Sopranos). McQuarrie will produce along with his producing partner and wifeHeather McQuarrie; Winter and his Oscar-nominated wifeRachel Winterwill also produce.
The Chameleonfollows the unbelievable true story ofFrédéric Bourdin, a French con man who impersonated missing teenagers for roughly 15 years from the mid-1990s until his arrest in 2005; he had been posing as an orphaned 15-year-old boy who quickly climbed the social ranks at his high school despite the fact that he was older than many of the school’s teachers. Bourdin was only apprehended thanks to a sharp-eyed administrator who spotted him on a television program and made the connection to the supposedly orphaned student after a Google image search.
Over the years, Bourdin had lived with a family in San Antonio, Texas, claiming to be their missing brother, and had “insinuated himself into youth shelters, orphanages, foster homes, junior high schools, and children’s hospitals. His trail of cons extended to, among other places, Spain, Germany, Belgium, England, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Bosnia, Portugal, Austria, Slovakia, France, Sweden, Denmark, and America” according to the original feature. That’s a story that’s quite fitting for this psychological thriller, one with more bite thanCatch Me If You Canand reportedly skewing towards the likes ofThe Silence of the LambsandMaking a Murderer.
Will you be catching this one on Netflix when it arrives? Be sure to let us know in the comments!
